Unfortunately this post is late in coming. Last week was an absolute whirlwind and time became increasingly amorphous as of late. The Society of American Archivists IU Student Chapter graduate conference, for which I was co-coordinator, was Saturday and Sunday, and I also co-sponsored a Society of American Archivists (national organization) workshop on Friday--long days, and I haven't slept past 6:30am since the weekend before. Complaints aside, everything turned out wonderfully. As with any event, there were some minor last minute issues to settle, but we emerged Sunday afternoon proud and relatively unscathed. I am excited to stay involved in conferences in the future, as an attendee and maybe down the line as an organizer once again; learning the perspective from the planner's point of view makes me much more appreciative of all the work which must go into larger regional or national annual gatherings such as MAC (Midwest Archives Conference) and SAA. Though I won't make it to MAC this year--St. Paul, MN is a bit too far and it's scheduled a bit too close to the end of the semester--I will be making my debut appearance at SAA. I thought it wise to take advantage of the student registration rate while I can, plus it takes place in Chicago this year, meaning I can weasel my way into free lodging with my folks! Additionally, I just found out yesterday that the Student Poster Session proposal I wrote up and submitted to represent the IU SAA Student Chapter was accepted for presentation! Work and projects never end, but I definitely think that's a good thing in this case. I cannot wait until August!
I think those last several sentences just put me over my exclamation point quota for this post. I will try to tone it down from here on out.
Back to my internship: this past week was the eighth week of the semester, meaning my experience at the Lilly is already halfway over. Every semester seems to fly by for me here at IU, but I think this is especially the case at present. Because of some last minute conference planning insanity, I only came in to intern on Tuesday and plan to make up the day I missed over spring break (i.e. next week). Even so, Tuesday was no ordinary day of processing. Similarly to my day with Dave in reference, I spent the morning in the E. Lingle Craig Preservation Lab at IU's Ruth Lilly Auxiliary Library Facility, or ALF, shadowing paper conservator Doug Sanders. The experience was fantastic in terms of exposing me to preservation issues faced by archivists and ways in which these can be handled.
I completed a Conservation of Circulating Collections workshop over the summer as taught by General Collections Conservator Garry Harrison, through which I gained hands on experience creating preservation housing (i.e. pamphlet binding, custom phase box creation, and clamshell box building), doing basic book repairs (i.e. spine replacement), and basic paper mending. The workshop, taught through IU's SLIS program, was quite helpful in introducing students to tactics for dealing with fragile book materials. Students also had the opportunity to take each project home to use as a reference tool in tangent with the fantastic preservation manual available publicly available online here. However, the experience left me wanting for more in terms of archival preservation. Manuscript and other archival collections contain a wide, ever-surprising variety of materials which can not necessarily be dealt with in a "by the book" sort of manner. My day with Doug gave me an in depth perspective on just how specified archival problems and solutions can be.
Doug was gracious enough to let me follow him around the lab as he tended to the day's projects. He kept a rolling explanation going in reference to each of his tasks and answered my seemingly ever-flowing round of questions with ease. From my perspective, it is quite obvious that Doug is adept at assessing various conservation/preservation issues and has a thorough grasp on the field and climate for related trends in thinking. He shared with me his education and work history--something I always think is interesting. So many library school students and prospective students that I have met express an interest in preservation, though it is rare that any of us follow through with preservation as a career path. We all seem to be interested in enabling the longevity of materials, but once we learn how much actual chemistry and concentrated education is involved to become a conservator or preservationist, it seems many of us opt to follow alternate professional paths. The field of preservation is a small one, and though there are several fantastic programs in the U.S. and Europe, these are highly selective and only for the most dedicated. Through past conversations with Jo Burgess, current Director of Wylie House Museum and formerly Assistant Head to the Preservation Department and Head of General Collections Conservation at the IU Libraries, I gather that in past, preservation was often a career learned through apprenticeship. However, there has apparently been a shift more toward educational programs for training, and for a time there existed a contention between the two schools of thought (Note that this is a generalization).
Either way, it is certainly understood that one cannot become a conservator or preservationist simply by taking a class or two through a standard Library Science curriculum. This is something Doug and I discussed in reference to his hesitancy to teach a semester-long IU SLIS course on preservation, though this is something urged by the department. I still think that such a course could be quite valuable, if only to teach students basic preservation identification, terminology, and instruct on real-world handling of various issues--be it through working with a connected preservation/conservation department at a large institution or contracting out to a regional work center. Because so much chemistry is involved and precise preservation treatments depend upon material composition, it is rarely advised for anyone not thoroughly trained in preservation to independently pursue treatments.
Some of the tasks that I watched and discussed with Doug included immersing a scrapbook page in water to release photographs and news clippings from adhesive (something I could never do myself--water and archival materials? I'm scared just thinking about it!), Mylar enclosures for fragile materials, issues surrounding iron gall ink and paper deterioration, de-acidification measures on modern newspapers from Ostrom, Elinsor mss. (IU professor and 2009 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics), creating string mats/mounts (I think I am getting that term wrong) for medieval manuscripts, and assessing preservation measures for well-worn Sanborn maps. We also talked about equipment and supplies common in preservation, managing priorities in a multifaceted institution such as IU, and the preservation/conservation department's present system of materials tracking and data management.
I will not elaborate on all the minute details here, but suffice it to say that I emerged with a deeper perspective on what preservation activities may involve, options for addressing problems, more knowledge concerning what problems may or may not be treatable and how cost effective treatment may be, and what sort of background may inform a conservator's decisions. It is also interesting to consider the topic of documentation as it relates to preservation and conservation treatments. Apparently, for many years, preservation measures and procedures were not regularly documented and put on file to inform repository staff and users of their occurrence. I am not speaking merely in terms of Indiana University library and archives; from what Doug said, it seems that this was not standard practice in the conservation/preservation community in general. Art museums may have maintained better track records for such actions due to the extreme importance of each piece's individual materiality for interpretation as well as future preservation, but it is still generally the norm that meticulous tracking of preservation for library and archival materials is not done to a thorough extent. I know that some collection management software, such as PastPerfect used for museum collections and employed at Wylie House Museum at present, includes a Conservation or Preservation measures section where changes can be tracked by type, date, and person making changes or doing assessments. Because treatments may affect the physical nature of materials, I feel that this is an important thing to think about for my future career. If preservation decisions are not documented (i.e. if a photograph was removed from what was once a scrapbook, but not marking it as such), users may misinterpret material relationships and provenance, which may interfere in representative authenticity.
Overall, the time I spent in the preservation lab really got me thinking about how we as archivist prioritize, address problems, and maintain records in relation to preservation and conservation. It was an eye opening experience which I expect will inform my thought pattern in practice in the future.
After spreading my efforts through various components of archival work outside of processing, I'm ready to get settle back in and delve into Mystery Writers of America mss. It's a fun collection that I will be talking about quite a bit in the coming weeks! Stay tuned.
Archivally yours,
Amy
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